MDDM The world is the case [WAS World-as...

[Richard Fiero]

Yes! Regarding Mason's hallucinations all of the below are 
right on in my opinion.
A guy who is willingly oppressed by a bathtub has got some issues.

The points stated in Terrance's post appear to define a rather 
consistent character.
Terrance wrote:

> >
> > Oh, maybe that 1) given the proper opportunity he'd
> > murder his father 2) his limbic system is addled with
> > dopamine, or 3) it's a necessary device, supplied by the
> > author, to resist the force of the ampersand, which, left
> > unopposed, threatens to swirl Dixon's red and Mason's
> > grey into MuD ?
>
>Excellent!
>
>The hallucinations, both visual and verbal, are in part, I suspect,
>caused by his melancholia and his yearnings, his desires or desire not
>to Desire, his losses.
>
>By God. By Devils. By Work. Guilt.  Mason is an Anatomy Of Melancholy,
>having most of the signs, symptoms, causes, Burton details.
>
>
>Murder his father.
>
>Back to Chapter 40 again and a recurring
>theme--slavery/work/marriage/anarchy/etc.
>
>
>The discussion is about slavery/"union labor."
>
>Recall that Slavery seems to function like S&M in GR. It defines all
>relationships.
>
>Some examples include:
>
>Austra challenges Mason's view of English marriage/slavery.
>The LED, Gershom, the Crew, Dixon and Mason themselves,
>European--African & American, Native American "slavery"
>
>
>Anyway, Mason's father cursing his son for a coward, a loaves were
>taken...Mason chooses Baradley, and Bradley's world, when he should have
>stood by his father, and their small doomed Paradise." MD.407
>
>Problem with the Father. Now that fits in with the S&M in GR.
>
>Dixon has resolved his problem with the Father, Mason has not.
>
>Mason has lost his wife.
>And every woman is but a fair copy of her, forbidden till death do them
>unite. MD.57
>
>The old woman at the Cape underestimates Mason's devotion to his dead
>wife,  his depression, his obsession with suppressing Desire.   MD.61
>
>Others encourage him (Dixon, ...when he visits his boys....) to take a
>new wife, but he is quite unprepared to do so.
>
>
>To the Cape
>
>It is worth noting that the females that accost him at the Cape are in
>in fact Ghosts or Sprites, Imps etc.  MD.66
>
>In fact, the entire Cape is a land of ghosts.
>Both Dixon and Mason are haunted at the Cape, but Mason is not able to
>see that being accosted by these female Sprites has nothing at all to do
>with Desire, but everything to do with Slavery. He is, after all, a man
>of reason. His reasoning is often nothing more than rationalization--"I
>imagine this place as another planet..." MD.69
>  Same sophistry he employs with the crew and the "Indians!" and in his
>reading of English history, be this the Jacobean, Weaver, Irish,
>rebellions.....
>
>Mason&Wicks
>
>
>
>On page 8 we learn that Mason may be haunting the RC or the RC may be
>haunting him.
>The sanity of both men is called into question several times during the
>text.
>Both are family outcasts. Although Mason has cast himself out while the
>RC, now entertaining the kids so as not to be cast out into the cold,
>was ostracized for his political activities. The RC says that he has
>been to Tyburn. However,  his subjunctives from bottom of page 8 to top
>of page 9 cast this into doubt. But, if the RC never witnessed a
>hanging, Mason was a season ticket holder for the Friday hangings.
>
>The RC may be playing at insanity (Munchausen's disorder), but like
>Hamlet and Ishmael and again like Mason, he will take the cure, a voyage
>at sea. MD.10 & MD.25
>
>Note that several characters feign insanity, including Captain Grant
>MD.51 and the LED MD.23
>
>When he first meets Mr. Dixon he tells Dixon to go see a hanging. That
>Mason talks about this morbid entertainment with Mr. Dixon at their
>first meeting is troublesome enough, but he talks this depressing gothik
>stuff with lady folk he meets at taverns. When he's sober yet! He's
>forever Dragging down Mr. Dixon's manic lady-killing. (Excepting LL's
>Tail & Tub, which could very be a Mason paranoid fantasy, when does
>Dixon have sex with a lady in this novel?)  Even his "pregnancy" with
>pies
>and cakes, imo, could be only fat or some homoerotic parody (Dixon and
>Mason share a bed and a honeymoon quilt, not unlike I&Q of Moby-Dick).
>
>Also, at one point Mason's sexual orientation--the direction of one's
>sexual interest toward members of the same, opposite, or both sexes--is
>called into question.
>
>His member is in good working order, but he finds himself with the lady
>of the house at the Cape, arousing him so that he might impregnate a
>slave. The husband is none too happy about what he thinks Mason has done
>(Mason is victim of irony). He is attracted to very young girls. He ends
>up in bed with  a
>slave girl. He is a toy in the hands of Florinda.
>
>He is, as you note, all snuffs, buffs, grays.
>
>His political/career ambitions are also a source of his depression. And
>his late wife was tied into this too.
>
>Mason doesn't trust too many people. He's very paranoid. Even this late
>in their adventures he continues to question Dixon's "connections."
>
>Mason left his sons.
>
>
>And so on....
>
>Cats
>
>http://www.bartleby.com/234/4.html
>
>Wokin all day in the facctory.....